“By the way, I picked this up for you on my way through town.” Reaching into her spotty Seasalt bag, Dee pulled out a tattered leaflet, which she passed to Gemma.
“Rock Players – looking to cast for their end-of-summer production of Twelfth Night,” Gemma read aloud. Turning to Dee she said, “I really don’t think so.”
“Why ever not? You said yourself you love Shakespeare, so this would be right up your street. Besides, what better way to get you back into acting without the pressure?”
Gemma stared at the leaflet. Although it was a bit dog‐eared, the setting it depicted in the grounds of a local stately home made her heart skip a beat. Momentarily she saw herself acting the part of Viola. Oh God, she loved that role so much! Viola spent most of the play eaten up with her secret love for Orsino and having to hide her true feelings away, and hiding your true feelings was something Gemma knew all about. For a split second she was seriously tempted, before she remembered that Viola also spent most of the play dressed as a boy and wearing the obligatory tights. The very idea of anyone seeing her sausagey legs filled Gemma with horror.
She offered the leaflet back. “No thanks.”
Dee looked disappointed. “Well, keep it anyway and have a think? You don’t have to make any sudden decisions, but I reckon you’d love it.” She paused and then added nonchalantly, “And who knows what it could lead to? Rock’s full of all kinds of media types. You could end up being spotted...”
Gemma laughed. “You should never have given up your life coaching. I promise I’ll think about it, OK?”
Dee raised her hands. “Perfectly OK!”
The rest of the morning passed peacefully. It was just coming up to lunchtime, and Gemma was wiping her hands on her apron before taking a break, when Dee burst into the kitchen. Her eyes were wide and she looked more excitable than Gemma had ever seen her.
“Take those off and get yourself into the shop,” she ordered, whipping off Gemma’s apron and cap, and giving her a shove in the direction of the shop.
Gemma scooped handfuls of curls out of her eyes. “What’s going on?”
“There’s a man here who says he’s come to see you. Apparently he’s taking you out for lunch!” Dee was breathless, but then pushing twelve stone of Gemma through a doorway was easier said than done.
“You’ve got the wrong person,” Gemma protested. “There’s nobody due to take me anywhere. Besides, nobody knows where I’m working.”
“Well, somebody must have done their detective work, because he’s definitely requesting you,” Dee replied. Her voice had her I won’t be argued with tone, so reluctantly Gemma allowed herself to be frogmarched out of the kitchen. It was all a waste of time anyway, because there wasn’t anyone she knew who would want to take her for lunch – and even if there had been, she was hardly dressed for it in her flowery gypsy top, tatty Skechers and saggy leggings with perished elastic. No: the man standing in the doorway, his back to her and little more than a silhouette against the bright sunshine, wasn’t really looking for her. She wasn’t Cinderella, was she? More a case of Pastry Gemma.
Then the man turned round and Gemma’s mouth fell open.
“Hello, Gemma,” said Callum South softly. “Can we start again please?”
Chapter 23
Gemma was all for turning around and marching back into the kitchen. There was absolutely no way she was going to have lunch with Callum South. Firstly because the sight of him made her so angry she couldn’t have eaten a thing and secondly because wasn’t he supposed to be on some calorie-controlled macrobiotic diet? The last thing she needed was his manager and trainer and bloody Emily bawling her out for a second time.
“I don’t think so,” she said so coldly it was a miracle a glacier didn’t slide by.
Cal was pulling off his cap and sunglasses. Behind him the midday sun turned his trademark corkscrew blonde hair into a halo, but Gemma wasn’t fooled: he was no angel.
“Sure, Gemma, I don’t blame you for being angry,” he said apologetically. “What can I say? I behaved like a total prick. I feel terrible about it, so I do.”
Gemma said nothing. He couldn’t feel half as bad as she had, clutching a cake and looking like some kind of deranged stalker. Just the recollection made her skin feel prickly and hot with shame.
Cal twisted his baseball cap in his hands. “All I can say is that I panicked and I behaved appallingly. Please, let me make it up to you? And explain? Lunch as an apology?”
“Why? Because you think I’m a greedy, cake-munching lump that’ll be won over by grub?” she snapped, and heard Dee groan.
Oh dear. So much for all those positive affirmations.
Cal looked horrified. “No! Of course not! I just thought it might be a nice thing to do. I had somewhere in mind: a friend’s place, outside of Rock where I can eat and chat to you without a manager nagging me or some pap trying to get a double-chin shot.”
“Are you trying to make me feel sorry for you? Because it isn’t working.” Her floury hands on her hips, Gemma glowered at him. Typical self-obsessed celeb.
“Jaysus, no!” He ran a frantic hand through those boingy curls. “I was just trying to explain, but I’m fecking it up. Like I do everything. It’s just lunch. That’s all.”
Gemma tried to avoid those big sad eyes, like the saddest Andrex puppy ever on a particularly sad day. “I’m working, so even if I wanted to come, the answer’s no.”
Dee, whose own eyes had been popping like Ping-Pong balls ever since Cal had taken off his celeb camouflage, took pity on him and gave Gemma a prod.
“You’re not officially working this afternoon,” she pointed out. “You’re free to go.”
Cal looked hopeful but Gemma wasn’t going to be persuaded.
“I’m busy with the gingerbread Lanhydrock, remember?” she told Dee.
“That can wait until tomorrow,” Dee insisted. Turning to Callum, who was still hovering awkwardly by the door, she smiled brightly and added, “Why don’t you wait in the car? She’ll be right with you once she’s freshened up.”
“I don’t want to go for lunch with him,” Gemma hissed as her boss bundled her back into the kitchen. “He’s a tosser and I can’t stand him.”
“Nonsense!” Dee whipped Gemma’s apron off. “He’s Callum South and he might be a few pounds heavier these days but he is still bloody gorgeous.” Reaching into her Seasalt bag, she plucked out a comb, which she tugged through Gemma’s wild hair before fastening the tresses into a loose knot at the nape of her neck with a glittery slide. “Besides, both my sons are huge Dangers supporters and if you could manage to get an autograph, or even better a couple of tickets, they’d be thrilled.”
“You’re pimping me out for tickets to the football?”
“Don’t be so dramatic.” Now Dee was flourishing a mascara wand like Obi-Wan Kenobi’s lightsabre. Gemma dodged; things were bad enough without having an eye poked out – although, thinking about it, this would be a great reason to skip lunch. As if not wanting to spend time with a cowardly, lying and egotistical git wasn’t enough of a reason.
“Anyway,” Dee continued, practically wrestling Gemma into a half nelson and squirting her with No 5, “you said how upset you were with what happened, so now’s your chance to let the guy make up for it.”
Gemma tried to protest but by this point Dee was busy slicking lip gloss on and she couldn’t move her mouth.
“You also keep telling me how much you want to act and to be on the television, so maybe this is a golden opportunity,” Dee continued, stepping backwards and admiring her handiwork. “Remember how we talked about putting it out there for the universe to deliver? Well, here’s your chance to do exactly that.”
Gemma wasn’t convinced. “I don’t think reality TV is really where I want to be anymore.”
“You won’t know until you try.” Dee put her hands on her narrow hips and gave Gemma a searching look. “What have you got to lose? At the very least you’ll have an apology and
a nice lunch.”
It was a fair point but Gemma was hardly dressed for lunch with an A-lister, even one that was several stone overweight and in disguise. She was wearing her oldest, tattiest leggings and superannuated Skechers. She had some paisley shorts in her rucksack, which she supposed she could put on, but it had been so long since she’d shaved her legs Gemma could have grated cheese with the stubble. Besides, those shorts made her bum look huge.
Or should that be even huger? Oh God, she really ought to diet...
“I look a state,” she wailed.
“You look lovely. I do wish you’d stop all these negative comments; they’re so self-defeating. Haven’t you been practising the exercises in the mirror?”
“I would but I keep cracking them all,” Gemma quipped, and her boss rolled her eyes.
“I can see we’ve still got a lot of work to do on your esteem,” Dee sighed. “But that can wait. Now go out there and get those tickets – I mean have a lovely lunch!”
Makeover completed, Dee propelled her back into the shop and handed Gemma her rucksack. Feeling mutinous, Gemma ventured out into the street where Cal was waiting in a white Range Rover Sport that dazzled in the sunshine. With its pimped alloys, private number plates and tinted windows, it couldn’t have looked more conspicuous. When he caught sight of her, Cal honked the horn and waved.
“I thought you were supposed to be incognito?” she grumbled as she clambered into the vehicle. “So much for the dark glasses and baseball cap. I don’t know why you don’t just roar up in a red Ferrari.”
Cal sighed. “Because I can’t squeeze into it anymore.”
“You actually have a red Ferrari?”
He gave her a quick grin and in spite of the fact that she still smarted from his words of a week ago Gemma found herself smiling back. That crescent-moon dimple made his good humour contagious.
“Sure, of course I have a red Ferrari. And don’t they make you buy one when you sign for a premier team? And a mock-Tudor mansion? And a giant hot tub?”
“And full of babes in bikinis?”
“WAG soup? Practically compulsory.”
At the mention of soup, Gemma’s stomach rumbled. It was feeling empty because Angel, who had rolled in drunk at some ungodly hour last night, had eaten the remaining two slices of bread and polished off what was left of the cereal. Skipping breakfast made Gemma feel virtuous, or at least it did until she tended to crack around half eleven and raid the biscuit tin.
“Hungry?” Cal asked.
Gemma flushed. “I didn’t have any breakfast.”
Cal knocked the gearshift into drive and the car rolled forward, so silently that for a moment Gemma thought he’d forgotten to start it. Wow. This was a bit different to her elderly Beetle, which sounded like a tractor. After the long drive to Rock she’d been contemplating buying earplugs in bulk to hand out to any future passengers.
“I did,” he told her as they drove through the town. “I had two egg whites, a wheatgrass juice and a buckwheat pancake. It all came to under three hundred calories.”
Gemma wasn’t sure what wheatgrass or buckwheat was. They sounded like something her father would feed the cattle. And what was the point of eating eggs without the lovely yellow yolk to dip big fat soldiers in?
“That sounds very healthy,” she said politely.
“It was fecking disgusting,” Cal said, screwing up his face. “I swear to God my stomach was digesting itself by 10 a.m. Then I went for another run and lifted weights for an hour. This is time off for good behaviour and, believe me, I’ve earned it. It’s good to escape the cameras for a bit. And my management,” he added with a grimace.
“So where do they think you are?”
“Truro, seeing my solicitor.”
“So, they’ve no idea you’re with the mad cake girl then? I suppose you’ll pretend this never happened too?”
They were in Wadebridge now. The small town thronged with tourists wobbling on hired bicycles en route to the Camel Trail. Gemma couldn’t help thinking that a bike ride along the river looked like much more fun than lifting weights.
Cal sighed. “I behaved like a total knob, didn’t I?”
Gemma wasn’t about to deny it. “Yes.”
“Yeah, well, it wouldn’t be the first time. Breaking my leg falling out of a nightclub pissed and ruining my career wasn’t my smartest move either.”
Gemma recalled the press going wild the day Callum South had ended his glittering career so abruptly by literally falling out of a nightclub. One fractured femur and a junior doctor who hadn’t set it quite right later, and the final whistle had blown for Callum South’s footballing career, although the tabloids had written that it was little short of a miracle that this hadn’t been caused by a groin strain, so famous was Cal’s varied love life. He’d gone from being the Irish Beckham to a bloated, boozing has-been in less than six months, and rarely a day had passed without the red tops running a story about his latest drunken escapade or picturing him looking as though he’d swallowed himself. Without a Posh-style WAG on his arm and a bunch of photogenic children to pose prettily with him for OK! magazine, the Callum South brand had been in real jeopardy. Only his reality show had managed to save him from becoming the next George Best.
“But honestly? The knobbiest thing I’ve ever done? That must be turning down your cake. It looked bloody gorgeous. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. How can I eat Ryvita when all I can think about is cake?”
Gemma couldn’t help it. He was making her smile, which was annoying when she was actually very cross indeed.
Sensing that she was starting to defrost, Callum pressed on with his explanation.
“Look, you’ve got to understand – I really need this gig. What else is a washed-up fat footballer going to do? I haven’t got the whole brand Beckham thing going on – I tried to pull a Spice Girl back in the day but even Sporty turned me down – and if I screw up this TV show then that’s it for me, game over. They’ll just wheel out another fat celebrity, won’t they? It’s not like we’re thin on the ground. Jaysus, or thin anywhere, now I come to think of it!”
“I hear Val Kilmer’s looking very porky these days,” Gemma offered. To cheer herself up the other day when her size-fourteen jeans had refused to do up, she’d Googled fat celebrities. Cal had featured heavily – no pun intended – as had various once-gorgeous A-listers. It made her feel better and alarmed all at the same time. At least they’d all had the head start of being attractive in the first place, whereas she’d always been average on a good day, wearing Spanx and with her hair done.
“Sure, I remember how ripped he was in that volleyball scene with Tom Cruise in Top Gun. Now he looks like he’s eaten Tom. Poor bastard. It’s hard work keeping the weight off when you love food,” Cal sighed wearily as he turned the car in the direction of Watergate Bay. “Every day is like a food war for me. I’ve signed this watertight contract with Leopard TV, and I have to lose three stone by the end of the summer otherwise they’ll drop me, and Claire from Steps will be drafted in before you can say ‘Tragedy’.”
Now it was Gemma’s turn to sigh. “You and me both. I’m an actress but I’m far too fat to get any work, according to my agent. She’s refused to put me up for any roles unless I’m a size ten by September.”
“That’s ridiculous. You’re not fat. You’re gorgeous, so you are,” Cal said gallantly.
Gemma looked down at her thighs, which were spilling over the edge of the cream leather passenger seat. “Thanks, but I think we both know that’s patently untrue. I am fat and I do need to lose weight.”
“You’re curvy and sexy.” Cal’s eyes were hidden behind his Prada shades, but Gemma felt them flicker over her body and her face grew warm. Instinctively she sucked in her stomach and wished she wasn’t wearing a scoop-necked top from which her boobs always fought to escape like scoops of troublesome vanilla ice cream. “I couldn’t take my eyes off you in that bakery, so I couldn’t.”
Gemma
was crap at accepting compliments, especially from men, and even more especially from attractive ones. And Callum South, three stones overweight or not, was still a very attractive man. She supposed that if she’d practised the mirror exercises more faithfully she might be better at it. To deflect attention away from any discussion of her looks, she took her usual tack and cracked a joke.
“That’s blatantly untrue. You only had eyes for the sausage rolls!”
Cal bantered back, “I was more interested in the baps!” Then, seeing her blushing, he said gently, “Seriously, though. Don’t put yourself down. If you’re a good actress then you’re a good actress. Weight shouldn’t come into it.”
“Yeah, right. Tell that to all those size-zero actresses. The trouble is I love cooking and I love food. It’s a nightmare.”
They were whizzing down Tregurrian Hill, the sea a glittering Maggie Thatcher blue before them.
“Tell me about it,” said Cal bleakly. “When I couldn’t play football anymore it was such a relief to kick back for a bit and enjoy my grub. My grandmammy makes the best sausage coddle in the world and her soda bread’s to die for. But I had to earn some money somehow; houses in Brentwood don’t come cheap, and have you filled up a Range Rover lately? Jaysus!”
Gemma had to admit that she hadn’t ever filled up a Range Rover, lately or otherwise.
“So the reality show was a godsend,” he explained. “It pays the bills and the costs for my grandmammy’s nursing home back in Cork. My agent was thrilled when I first hit sixteen stone because Peter Andre was off for the summer and ITV2 had a spare slot. Before I knew it, the contracts were through, I’d practically signed in blood and I was on the treadmill, literally and metaphorically. No more making bread and plastering it in mammy’s butter; no more cheesy chips and no more cakes. Just rabbit food and diets.”
He looked so forlorn at this that Gemma’s tender heart went right out to him. She knew from bitter experience just how grumpy she got when she was trying to diet.
Escape for the Summer Page 19